escholarship uc item 5ww094n7

7/27/2019 eScholarship UC Item 5ww094n7

1/30

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing

services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic

research platform to scholars worldwide.

Peer Reviewed

Title:

Virtual Bodies: Anatomy, Technology, and the Inhuman in Descartes

Journal Issue:

Paroles geles, 16(1)

Author:

Judovitz, Dalia

Publication Date:

1998

Publication Info:

Paroles geles, UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies, UC Los Angeles

Permalink:

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ww094n7

Keywords:

Harvey, circulation, blood, machine, rationalism, materialism
http://escholarship.org/http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ww094n7http://escholarship.org/uc/search?creator=Judovitz%2C%20Daliahttp://escholarship.org/uc/ucla_french_pg?volume=16;issue=1http://escholarship.org/uc/ucla_french_pghttp://escholarship.org/http://escholarship.org/http://escholarship.org/http://escholarship.org/


2/30

Virtual Bodies: Anatomy, Technology, and theInhuman in DescartesDaliaJudovitz

Rene Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637) marks amajor turning point in the representation of the body in theWestern tradition. Rather than valorizing the lived body and no-tions of experience, as his predecessor Michel de Montaigne haddone in The Essays (1588), Descartes focuses on the body nolonger as subject, but as object of knowledge, by redefining itanatomically, technologically, and philosophically. ^ He proceedsfrom the anatomical redefinition of the body in terms of the cir-culation of blood, to its technological resynthesis as a machine,only to ascertain its philosophical reduction to a material thing.Descartes's elaboration of the mind-body duahty will reinforcethe autonomy of the body as a material thing, whose purely ob-jective and mechanical character will mark a fundamental depar-ture from previous humanist traditions. Decontextualized fromits wordly fabric, the Cartesian body wUl cease to function byreference to the human, since its lived, experiential reality will besupplanted through mechanical analogues.^

Descartes's anatomical interpretation of the body in terms ofthe circulation of blood breaks away from earUer humoral con-ceptions of the body predominant into the early part of the sev-enteenth century. Dating back to Galen (Claudius Galenus, 130-200? A.D.), the body's physiological complexion was imderstoodto be governed by the interplay and balance of the four humors:blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile).This humoral conception enabled an understanding of the bodythat was flexible and transitive, since the body's complexionchanged depending on the specific combinations and particularmixture of these four fluids.^ The dominance of any particularhumor created an imbalance that shifted the individual's com-plexion from health to disease. This humoral interpretation of

21


3/30


4/30

DaliaJudovitz

tween sangninity and nomination, such as we find in nobiliarykinship structures based on paternity. Descartes's anatomical ac-count reflects the emergence of a new symbolic order that valor-izes blood less as a figure of hereditary transmission, than as asystem whose internal circulation and closure defines the self-enclosure of the body. Descartes's selective appropriation ofHarvey's model for the circulation of blood will lead to the re-definition of the intelligible essence of the body in terms of itsmaterial and mechanical functions."^ Harvey's and Descartes'sinterventions reflect the emergence of a new concept of medi-cine, one that no longer relies on the "supposed isomorphismbetween the cosmic order and the equilibrium of the organism"reflected in nature's presumed powers to correct its own disor-ders.5

As opposed to earher conceptions of blood which did not in-volve the notion of circulation, Harvey in De motu cordis et san-guinis (1628) describes the circulation of blood as a closed circle,where blood is recycled rather than consumed. The blood's en-closure within the pathways of the arterial-venal system estab-lishes it as an autonomous system of exchange within the body.The continual, circular, and regenerative movement of blood in-sures both the preservation and regeneration of the body.^Moreover, the circulation of blood as a microcosm reflects themovements of the macrocosm, that of the circular motion of ce-lestial bodies. This analogy of circular motion inscribes the cir-culation of blood within the framework of Aristotehan cos-mology and the Renaissance and Baroque world views thatsought to establish analogical relations between the microcosmand the macrocosm.^ Although Harvey compares the heart, inpassing, to various mechanical devices (a pump, fire engine, orhydraulic device) these mechanical analogies still reflect an Aris-totelian vitalist view regarding the centrality of the heart, ratherthan a mechanical worldview. Nonetheless, despite his mech-anist tendencies, Descartes does not appropriate Harvey's inter-pretation of the heart as a pump. He explains the blood's circu-lation and movement as a result of the generation of heat in theheart, a position which he believes to be different from Aristo-tle's prior formulation.^

23


5/30

Anatomy, Technology, & the Inhuman in Descartes

What may have interested Descartes in Harvey's anatomicalmodel of the circulation of blood is precisely its autonomouscharacter, as a closed and self-regulating system of exchange,that redefines the physical closure of the body as material fact.The circulation of blood defines the body as a self-enclosed sys-tem whose network character provides the pathways for its me-chanical functions. The circulation of blood provides a map forthe body, it enables its schematic and figurative representation,as a virtual groundplan that autonomizes the logic of the body,dislocating and isolating it from the world as its framework ofreference. The capacity of the body to analogically mirror and re-flect the macrocosm \s disrupted, since Descartes's objectificationof the body reduces its capacity to sustain and generate meaning.The body is no longer a mirror of the larger cosmos, it is a mereobject whose mechanical logic and material definition reflects hisphilosophical understanding of nature as inanimate, definedpurely as matter, extension, and motion.

The autonomy, centraUty, and circuitous nature of the arte-rial-venal system enables Descartes to provide a physicalanalogue to the philosophical reflections regarding the centralityand autonomy of the cogito. In Part 4 of the Discourse, Descartesdescribes the discovery of the cogito as a hypostatic momentbased on a fiction of total negation: "And then, examiningattentively that which I was, I saw that I could conceive that Ihad no body, and there was no world nor place where I mightbe; but yet I could not for all that conceive that I was not" (HR I,101).' The validity of the cogito is founded on the radical denialand elimination of all bodily and material qualities, so as toaffirm the identity of thought with a hypothetical form of exis-tence that is no longer grounded in the world. The artificial vera-city of the cogito supplants in its definition of existence, the mat-erial reality of the body and its place in the world. By defiiungthe cogito purely "as a substance the whole essence or nature ofwhich is to think," which is independent of "any place" or "ma-terial thing," as well as, "entirely distinct from body" (HR 1, 101),Descartes removes it from the realm of wordly existence.^" Thuswhen the body is brought back later in the Discourse, its phys-ical and material reality no longer references the same order ofexistence as the cogito. For the anatomical body described in Part

24


6/30

DaliaJudovitz

5 returns not as a living entity but as a dissected corpse, whosemechanical logic is associated with artifice of automata (HR I,116). The anatomical description of the body in terms of thecirculation of blood thus provides a blueprint, a schematic mapof the body as an apparatus, whose intelhgibility will begoverned by material and mechanical laws.The Automaton as a Virtual Model

Everymetaphysics ofman as theprotagonist in the naturaltheatre ofcreation is embodied in the automaton-Jean Baudrillard

The analogy of the human body to mechanical devices is notnew to the seventeenth century, but goes back to the late MiddleAges. In his tieatise on surgery (1306-1320), Henri de Mon-devUle compares surgery to the mechanical arts, specifically toarchitecture.il More importantiy, he goes on to define the bodyas the "instrument of the soul," and he proceeds to dismemberthis instrument into its constituent parts by analogy to variousmechanical devices involved in artisanal production: the lungsare compared to the bellows of a blacksmith, the elbow to a pul-ley, etc.^2 jhi5 apparent instrumentalization of the body, how-ever, preserves its organic character, to the extent that theseartisanal analogies imply notions of social organization. ThusMondeville's account of the anatomical body mirrors in its or-ganization the hierarchical structures and bonds of obhgationand debt that define the social body^^

Other possible sources for Descartes's analogy of the organ-ism and the machine date back to St. Thomas Aquinas's passingmetaphorical comparison of animals and clocks, as well as toGomez Pereira's claim that animals are machines, lacking anysensitive soul.!"* Descartes's analogy of the human organism to amachine departs from these earUer formulations, in that theCartesian machine acquires a new network of meanings. It desig-nates an instrument for the transformation of natural forces or anordered arrangement of parts that can function autonomously. Itcan also signify a combination of machines of varying degrees ofcomplexity. In Descartes's time the word machine also has an

25


7/30


additional meaning, that of a ploy, ruse or a machination. Thislatter meaning is implicit in Descartes' s use of the machine as aheuristic device, insofar as it functions as the insignia of humaningenuity in its capacity to manipulate nature and deploy arti-fice. ^^ For the machine in Descartes's works is not merely a tech-nical and mechanical analogue of nature, rather, its marvelous,quasi-artistic character attests to the erosion of the distinctionsbetween nature and art. It represents an usurpation of the Aristo-tehan interpretation of the organon that designates a functionalpart of the animal, since this notion of functionality is expmdedby erasing distinctions between organization and fabrication.^^The Cartesian machine results from the dismemberment of thenatural body and its re-synthesis, manipulation, and control ac-cording to the dictates of a rational model.

In his Treatise on Man (written during 1629-33, alongsidethe Discourse and the World and published posthumously in1662), Descartes does not speak directiy of man. Rather, whenspeaking of men he refers to "fictional men," hypothetical ana-logues intended to cast light on "real men" in the same way thatthe axiomatic "new world" in the World is invoked to illuminatethe nature of the "real world."^^ This ghosting and doubling ofthe human, by positing the priority of a fictional hypothesis inorder to elucidate the real, emerges as a stiategy of virtualizationthat enables Descartes to speak of the body not as a Hved entity,but as a disembodied technical and mechanical thing. For whatis presented initially as a mere tool for conceptualization, the"fictional men" of the Treatise or the "new world" of the World,becomes the theoretical prototype which will dictate what can beknown about "real men" or the "real world." Commenting onthe Treatise, Canguilhem underlines the deception that Des-cartes's theory effectuates, since the analogy of the organism tothe machine ignores the concrete existence of the Hved body inorder to substitute for it a rational reconstiuction:

The theory of the animal-machine, would therefore have thesame relation to life that a set of axioms has to geometry, thatis, nothing more than a rational reconstruction. Thus the theoryoperates by deception: it pretends to ignore the concrete exis-tence of what it must represent, and it denies that what it actu-

26


8/30

DaliaJudovitz

ally produces comes only after it has been rationallylegitimized. 18

But this rational reconstruction of the organism as a machine isitself a construction based on mathematical geometrical princi-ples. Its legitimacy is derived not from the body that it putativelyrepresents, but from the general mathematization of nature. Itspriority relies on the preeminence of epistemology, which as atheory of knowledge must precede all other understanding ofthe world.i' Having inaugurated his Treatise with the claim thatthese [fictional] men possess a soul and a body, Descartes ineffect separates the two by considering the body alone. Althoughhe briefly mentions the union of the body and the soul, this topicwill be left largely untreated. For the Treatise will focus on theworkings of the body alone, considered not as a real entity, butas a hypothetical, virtual construct:

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine madeof earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of mak-ing it as much as possible like us. Thus God not only gives itexternally the colours and shapes of all the parts of our bodies,but also places inside it all the parts required to make it walk,eat, breathe, and indeed imitate all those of our functionswhich can be imagined to proceed from matter and to dependsolely on the disposition of our organs.We see clocks, artificial fountains, mills and such other ma-chines which, although man-made, have the power to move oftheir own accord in many different ways. But I am supposingthis machine to be made by the hand of God, and so I thinkyou may think it capable of a greater variety of movementsthan I could possibly imagine in it, and of exhibiting more art-istry than I could possibly ascribe to it. (PWD I, 99)Briefly alluding to the Bibhcal creation of the body as a

statue made of earth {Genesis 2:7), Descartes rewrites this mythicorigin. His description of the human body as a statue and then asa machine undermines its Biblical status as a vessel which isanimated by the breath of God. Endowed with the external sem-blance of the human body, this artificial replica mechanicallyimitates human functions, such as walking, eating, and breath-ing. The fact that Descartes includes breathing among these me-

27


9/30


chanical functions alerts us to the secularization of the bodyinsofar as it is removed from the sacred purview of the pneuma(breath, or soul).2 This secularization of the body is accompa-nied by its dehumanization. By describing human functions inpurely mechanical terms, as proceeding from matter and de-pending solely on the disposition of the organs, Descartes dehu-manizes them insofar as they cease to refer to the organic reaUtyof the lived body. These mechanical analogues simulate elementsinvolved in the organization of the lived body only to sublatethem technologically. This conflation of the material and me-chanical aspects of the organization of the body with its overalldefinition as an organism reflect Descartes's reassignation of thehuman to the mind, instead of the body.

Descartes's subsequent mention of man-made machines,such as clocks, artificial fountains and mills that have the powerto move of their own accord, serves to underline human techni-cal ingenuity. This allusion to the power of machines as artisanalproducts is a testament to God's superior productive capacity tofabricate the human body as an infinitely complex mechanicaldevice. According to Descartes's account, God the creator be-comes God the fabricator, the consummate artisan, who disposesof infinite resources and artistry. The gesture of divine creationwhich constitutes the realm of the natural world is now rede-fined as a form of fabrication that indelibly conflates techniqueand art. The natural world is thus sublated by the artificial logicof the artifact, just as the body is replaced by its mechanicalspecter the automaton. As Canguilhem points out: "The inten-tion behind the construction of an automaton was to copy na-ture, but in the Cartesian theory of life the automaton serves asan intelligible equivalent of nature. There is no room in Cartesianphysics for an ontological difference between nature and art."2iThe Cartesian automaton does not copy nature, but seeks to gainascendancy over it by becoming its intelligible equivalent. In sodoing, it conflates organization with fabrication, and erases thedistinctions between nature and art.^

But Descartes is not content merely to secularize divine crea-tion by equating it with human technical and artistic ingenuity.Nor is he satisfied with eroding the distinctions between natureand art. He goes a step further by suggesting that nature itself, in

28


10/30

DaliaJudovitz

making animals, has created automatons superior to artificialones: "Since art copies nature, and people can make variousautomatons which move without thought, it seems reasonablethat nature should even produce its own automatoiis, which aremuch more splendid than the artificial ones namely, the ani-mals" (Letter to More, 5 February 1649; PWD III, 366). WhUeDescartes appears to recognize the superior powers of nature,insofar as it produces animals, he considers them to be nothingmore than automatons that are more accomplished than man-made artificial ones, hi the process, nature as source of animatelife is replaced with nature as consummate artisan of mechanical,but hauntingly life-like automatons. Since nature produces ani-mal-machines, its perceived technological and artistic interven-tions overlap with human artisanal activities. From thisperspective, when art copies nature it only reproduces the veryprocesses of production attributed to nature itself. This instru-mentalization of nature, as a supposed creator of automatons,removes certain aspects of its animate character, divesting it oflife and vital action.^^When Descartes mentions machines to explain the inner-workings of the organism, he relies on the technical devices ofhis time: clocks, artificial fountains, and water mills. But in theTreatise, Descartes frames his mechanical analogies for the hu-man organism by presenting them in an elaborate garden set-ting. Here, grottoes and fountains, constitutive elements oflandscape architecture, function as marvelous embodiments ofthe human body represented as a mechanical system:

Similarly you may have observed in the grottoes and fountainsof the royal gardens that the mere force with which the water isdriven as it emerges from its source \s sufficient to move vari-ous machines, and even to make them play various instru-ments or utter certain words depending on the variousarrangements of the pipes through which the water is con-ducted.

Indeed, one may compare the nerves of the machine I am des-cribing with the pipes in the works of these fountains, itsmuscles and tendons with the various devices and springswhich serve to set them into motion, its animal spirits with the

29


11/30


water that drives them, the heart with the source of water, andthe cavities of the brain with the storage tanks. Moreover,breathing and other such activities w^hich are normal and na-tural to this machine, and which depend on the flow of thespirits, are like the movements of a clock or mill, which thenormal flow of water can render continuous. (PWD 1, 100-101)If God created man in the garden of Eden, Descartes takes

the marvelous artifice of the gardens of his time as a paradigmfor the human body.24 Instead of simply describing the body inmechanical terms as he has done earlier, he now stages its ap-pearance as the unfolding scenography of a garden landscape.The mechanical complexity that underlines Descartes's descrip-tion of the human body is represented as a veritable feat of land-scape architecture and engineering, a complex system thatweaves into its conceptual fabric various kinds of machines,whose structural and hydraulic principles ensure continous mo-tion. The human body is represented as a composite of varioustechnical devices, parts of it operating like springs and othersoperating like channels and storage tanks, that is, conduits forthe flow, pressure and circulation of blood and the animal spirits.

What is notable in Descartes's discussion is the fact that thesystem for the circulation of blood also doubles as the carrier ofanimal spirits. The animal spirits represent the most rarefied andsubtle parts of the blood that are separated through a process ofmechanical filtration (based on the smallness of pores) into thepineal gland situated in the brain cavity (PWD I, 100).25 Theseminute corpuscles "cease to have the form of blood," since theyattain a virtual almost immaterial status. Their subtlety or fine-ness is such that they take on the character of a "very fine wind"or rather a "very lively and pure flame" (PWD, I, 100). Descartesalso makes an analogy between the nerves and the system ofpipes underlying a garden. He models the nervous system onthe arterial-venal model suggesting that neural circulation fol-lows a hydraulic model involving tiny doors or valves placed innerves (PWD I, 107). The nerves are animated by the passage ofanimal spirits who have the power to change the shape of mus-cles (PWD 1, 100). Descartes thus mechanizes the nervous systemby automating its functions, in order to explain its physiologicalprocesses in terms of the activity of the animal spirits. The inge-

30


12/30

DaliaJudovitz

nuity of the Cartesian model for the human body lies in its con-ception of hydraulic circuitry that simultaneously accounts bothfor the circulatory and the nervous system.

Descartes pursues his analogy of the human body with thegardens of his time, comparing external objects and their capa-city to stimulate sense organs with garden visitors who unwit-tingly trigger mechanisms that set an elaborate spectacle intomotion:

External objects, which by their mere presence stimulate itssense organs and thereby cause them to move in many differ-ent ways depending on how the parts of its brain are disposed,are like visitors who enter the grottoes of these fountains andunwittingly cause the movements which take place before theireyes. For they cannot enter without stepping on certain tileswhich are so arranged that if, for example they approach a Di-ana who is bathing they will cause her to hide in the reeds, andif they move forward to pursue her they will cause a Neptuneto advance and threaten them with his trident; or if they go inanother direction they will cause a sea-monster to emerge andspew water onto their faces; or other such things according tothe engineers who made the fountains. (PWD 1, 101)

Instead of presenting sense perception in technical terms, Des-cartes re-stages it as an elaborate spectacle whose theatricalcharacter \s intended to illustrate its mechanical underpinnings.The artifice of the hydraulic machine functions here as an ana-logue for the human, displacing its priority through the displayof an illusionism that mimics it. The choreographed movementsof these devices triggered by the movements of the spectatorssuggest not only their autonomous existence, but also the illu-sion of personality and even psychology, inasmuch as these fig-ures appear to respond and interact. The seemingly autonomousmovements of these machines create the illusion of agency, asthey mechanically ghost the human.

Descartes's representation of the workings of the humanbody by means of this scenographic garden display recalls thepresentation of the anatomical body made available through thespectacle of display afforded through dissection. In both cases,the human body is rendered invisible insofar as it makes itselfavailable as a display of complex mechanisms composed of spe-

31


13/30


cific mechanical parts and devices.^^ For Jean-Claude Beaune, theCartesian automaton is a theoretical instrument, a virtual modelthat elides its own intervention as a heuristic device: "Most ofall, the automaton is a spectral model, a sort of theoretical micro-srOjPe enabling a 'sighting of depth': the anatomy and the inter-nal movements are seen across the corporeal envelope, sup-posedly neghgible, as one would see the wheels of a machine."^^The opacity of the body as a corporeal entity is rendered trans-parent by the automaton, its spectral and mechanical analogue.Considered from this perspective, the body is no longer themeans for the world's disclosure, for its autonomization as amachine supplants its corporeal character by substituting for itan organizational, mechanized logic.The Specter of the Inhuman

For Iam one ofthose who deny thatmanunderstands bymeans ofthe body. .

.

Descartes

In the conclusion to his Treatise on Man, Descartes returns tohis earlier elaboration regarding the relation of bodily parts totheir requisite functions by reiterating his materialist and mecha-nist position: "these functions follow from the mere arrangementof the machine's organs every bit as naturally as the movementsof a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangements ofits counter-weights and wheels" (PWD I, 108).28 These functionsproceed solely from matter and the disposition of the organs un-derstood as the wheels and cogs of a machine. The capacity formovement, that generates the illusion of agency, is based solelyon the internal arrangement and disposition of bodily parts anddoes not require an external principle of arumation. As Descartesexplains, these organic functions do not necessitate that the ma-chine be conceived by supposing a "vegetative or sensitive soulor other principle of movement and life, apart from its blood andanimal spirits" (PWD I, 108).29 Descartes here rejects the medie-val conceptions of the soul as vegetative and sensitive entitiesthat animate the body, in order to emphasize the purely materialand mechanical nature of the body. According to Stephen Gauk-

32


14/30

DaliaJudovitz

roger, Descartes's aim was to show that certain psycho-physio-logical functions that had already been recognized as corporealcould be accounted for in a manner that did not render mattersentient.30

Ferdinand Alquie observes that Descartes's rejection of thesemedieval conceptions of the soul prepares the mechanized bodyfor the reception of the soul, as a unique entity whose sole func-tion will be rational and intellectual.^^ Descartes's identificationof the soul with reason alone goes against the Renaissance vital-istic or animistic interpretation of nature, wherein the soul per-meates the universe and is identified with life.^^ Earlier in theTreatise Descartes notes that "when a rational soul is present inthis machine it w^ill have as its principal seat the brain, and re-side there like the fountain-keeper" (PWD I, 101). The rationalsoul resides in the mechanized body as the ghost in the machine,the centralized fountain-keeper, sole agent and administrator ofthe mechanized functions of the body. The immaterial presenceof the rational soul that haunts the automated body controls itsbodily and material manifestations. As Descartes later explainsto Regius (Letter of May 1641): "There is only one soul in humanbeings, the rational soul; for no actions can be reckoned humanunless they depend on reason" (PWD, III, 182). The rational soulbecomes the sole point of reference for the human, for all formsof agency achieve their humanity through their dependence onreason alone. Thus the locus of the human becomes the mindalone defined as consciousness, intellection and vohtion. Theremoval of agency from all aspects of the body and its equationwith machines will redefine the purview of animahty as onewhich references a nature reduced to artifice and mechanics. ForDescartes considers animals to be like clocks, that is, machinesgoverned by the disposition of their organs and not by reason(HR 1, 117).^ Thus the reification of the human soul to a purelyrational entity accompanied by the total mechanization of thecorporeal body runs the risk of a materialist reduction, of theevacuation of all spiritual elements, since they may be perceivedpurely as effects engendered through material causes. AlthoughDescartes defends himself against the accusation that his rejec-tion of the sensitive and vegetative soul will open the way foratheists to deny the presence of a rational soul in the human

33


15/30


body, the rise of materialism in the eighteenth century, as at-tested by the writings of Julien Offray de La Mettrie and Barond'Holbach, will prove him otherwise.^

In Part 5 of the Discourse on the Method, Descartes recapitu-lates the mechanical analogies elaborated in his Treatise on Manby reaffirming the equation of the body to automata and mobilemachines. The perfectability of the human body as a machinebrings Descartes back to the question of how to distinguish thehuman from its mechanical analogues. For if there were suchmachines that both bore a resemblance to our body and couldsimulate its actions, then fundamental questions arise regardingthe distinction of the human from its inhuman, mechanical bodydoubles:

On the other hand, if there were machines which bore a resem-blance to our body and imitated our actions as far as it wasmorally possible to do so, we should always have two verycertain tests by which to recognize that, for all that, they werenot real men. The first is, that they could never use speech orother signs as we do when placing our thoughts on record forthe benefit of others....And the second difference is, that al-though machines can perform certain things as well or perhapsbetter than any of us can do, they infallibly fall short in others,by the which means we may discover that they did not actfrom knowledge, but only from the disposition of their organs.(HR 1, 116)

In this passage, the machine analogy for the body reveals itstroubling implications, insofar as the possibility of the mechani-cal simulation of the human body raises the specter of an inhu-man double that could come to haunt it. Hence, Descartes's needto posit two specific tests designed to reaffirm the differencebetween the human and the machine by reinforcing the mind-body duahty.

His first test, involving the appeal to speech or signs as thedistinguishing mark of the human, reUes on his valorization ofreason. However, the notion of reason evoked in this context isno longer the disembodied thought of the solipsistic cogito, de-fined by its self-identity and transparency. Rather, this notion ofreason emerges out of intersubjective and communicative ex-changes, and it references the capacity of individual subjects to

34


16/30

DaliaJudovitz

represent or embody thought. As Jean-Pierre Seris points out:"The loquela, the speech, performance and usage proper to hu-man language is the unique and certain indicator of the presenceof a soul that thinks in the bodies of others. "^5 Seris's emphasison language as the defining characteristic of the human neglectsthe fact that Descartes's appeal to speech and signs suggests amore general imderstanding of the subject's capacity for repre-sentation as attested by the capacity for manipulating and re-cording of signs, be they verbal or non-verbal. For as Descartesobserves in the Discourse, even the deaf and dumb are able touse signs to make themselves understood (HR 1, 117). Descartes'sstatement regarding man's use of speech and other signs identi-fies the humanity of the subject with the capacity for representa-tion. However, representation, whether linguistic or non-verbal,involves modes of embodiment through material signs. ThusDescartes's affirmation of the subject's humanity through repre-sentation contradicts his concurrent claims regarding the imma-terial nature of reason.

Descartes's second test for distinguishing the human and themachine rehes on his critique of the machine whose scope of ac-tion is limited because of its purely instrumental character. How-ever, when Descartes criticizes the instrumental limits of themachine, he is also necessarily alluding to his earlier equation ofthe body to the machine. While reason is a universal instrumentthat can serve all contingencies, bodily organs need special dis-position or adaptations for each particular action leading Des-cartes to conclude that it is impossible that there would be suffi-cient diversity in any machine to act in all events of life (HR I,116). Thus while machines may be able to perform certain func-tions better than humans, in the end they are limited by the factthat they do not act out of knowledge but simply out of the dis-position of their organs. Descartes's critique of the material lim-its of the machine, which is also an analogue of the human body,posits disembodied reason as the unique referent of the human.

Struggling against the ascendancy of the automaton, Descar-tes locates the human in a knowledge that derives not from thelogic of the organism, but rather supersedes the orgaiuc by go-verning its mechanisms. In so doing, he underlines the superior-ity and autonomy of reason as a faculty which is independent of

35


17/30


the material and mechanical organization of the body, since therational soul "could not be in any way derived from the powerof matter" (HR I, 118). While Descartes recognizes that it isinsufficient to conceive of the rational soul as "lodged in thehuman body like a pilot in his ship" and that it is "necessary thatit should also be joined and united more closely to the body"(HR 1, 118), the Discourse does not provide an understanding oftheir conjoined nature. Descartes' s final conclusion that "oursoul is in nature entirely independent of the body" (HR I, 118),will make it all the more difficult to envisage and mediate theirrelation. The rational soul's ultimate autonomy from materialand bodily reality implies that it functions in a virtual, ratherthan wordly realm of existence. Having radically severed therelation of the mind to the body, Descartes's subsequent effortsto suture their division will continue to pose problemsthroughout his later works.^^

Descartes's comments regarding the distinctions between thehuman and the machine bring out the fundamental paradoxesthat underlie his conception of the body. His first test for identi-fying the human with the capacity for representation, under-stood not merely as speech but as the abihty to communicateand embody ideas through signs, enters into conflict with hissecond test, which involves the limited instrumentality of thebody as machine and material artifact.^^ jf representation signi-fies the capacity for embodiment, for attairung material manifes-tation, then the limited or specialized performance of the body asmaterial artifact could no longer be viewed in opposition to themind, but would be construed as evidence of its embodied char-acter. For the capacity of the mind to engage in representation isnot a virtual event, but becomes perceptible and communicableprecisely through its engagement with the body and materialsigns.

Descartes's efforts to distinguish between the human and themachine thus function as an implicit test of the mind-body du-alism. The problem that will continue to haunt the Cartesiansystem is the inability to think embodiment, finding mediationbetween a disembodied reason and the mechanized body. Des-cartes's anatomical schematization of the body through the cir-culation of blood, and his subsequent resynthesis of the natural

36


18/30

DaliaJudovitz

body as a machine dismembered from the mind, emerge asinstances of a process of virtualization that documents the ascen-dancy of the automaton over the experiential body.^ Haunted byan errant, disembodied mind, the triumph of these virtual bodiesover the lived body will raise the specter of the inhuman as oneof Descartes's most significant legacies to the modern age. Thislegacy can only be overcome once reason is reembodied bybringing its capacity for representation within the purview of thebody and the materiality of the world.Dalia Judovitz is Professorand Chair ofthe Department ofFrench and Italian atEmory University.

Notes^ My analysis is based on Michel Foucault's notion of epistemic

rupture, that is of a historical and epistemological discontinuitybetween the late Renaissance and the Baroque and the Cartesian world-views. See his discussion in Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard,1966), pp. 13-15; 32-91.

2 Descartes' position represents a rejection both of the Frenchhumaiust tradition and of the Itahan Neoplatonist tradition, as well,since his elaboration of subjectivity as a disembodied entity breaks upthe continuity of the chain of being that enables the reflection of themicrocosm in the order of the macrocosm.

^ For a general analysis of Galen's humoral theories, seeRudolph E. Siegel, Galen's System ofPhysiologyand Medicine {Basel. S.Karger, 1968), pp. 205-224.

"* For a general account of Descartes' debt and reaction to Har-vey, see Etienne Gilson, Etudes sur le role de la pens^e m^dievale dansla formation du systeme cartsien, 5th ed. (Paris: 1984), pp. 51-101. Alsosee Marjorie Grene, "The Heart and Blood: Descartes, Plemp, andHarvey," in Essays in the Philosophy of Science of Ren^ Descartes, ed.Stephen Voss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 324-335.

5 See Georges Canguilhem's comment in A Vital Rationalist-Selected Writings from Georges Canguilhem, ed. Francjois Delaporte;trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, Zone Books, 1994), pp. 130-31.

37


19/30


* For a detailed analysis of Harvey's work, see Walter Pagel,Willian Harvey's Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and HistoricalBackground {New York: Hafner, 1967), pp. 51-59.

'' These analogies are visible in Harvey's dedication to Charles I,where he equates the sun, the king and the heart, see Owsei Temkin,"Metaphors of Human Biology," in The Double Face of Janus: AndOther Essays in the History ofMedicine (Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsPress, 1977), pp. 281-82.

8 See Descartes' letter to Plempius, 15 February 1638 (PWD, 111,79-80) and his comments in Description of the Human Body (1664;PWD 1, 318-19). Also see, Anne Bitbol-Hesperies' discussion in Le Prin-cipe de la Vie chez Descartes (Paris: 1990), pp. 55-102. Descartes' pre-ference for a model based on heat might be explained by his efforts toaccount both for the motion of blood and its distillation into the minutecorpuscles of the animal spirits.

^ All quotations from Descartes' writings come from The Philo-sophical Writings of Descartes, trans. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), henceforth abbreviatedas HR, volume and page number, and from The Philosophical Writingsof Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), henceforth abbreviatedas PWD, volume and page number.

10 Georges Canguilhem also notes the dependence of Descartes'theory of the animal machine on the cogito, see his Vital Rationalist, p.227.

" See Marie-Christine Pouchelle, Corps et Chirurgie a TApogeedu Moyen Age (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), pp. 170-73. Mondevilleprivileges the architect who is defined by the capacity to design a planof action. This privilege, accorded to architects as a guiding paradigmfor surgeons, also occurs in Descartes' analogies in the Discourse (Part2), when he compares the philosopher with the architect who operatesaccording to an overall blueprint.

12 For these analogies, see M-C. Pouchelle, Corps et Chirurgie,pp. 176-183. Aristotle also makes an analogy beween animal move-ments and automatic mechanical movements, like those found in warmachines, such as the catapult. See Alfred Espinas, "L'Organisation oula machine vivante en Grece au FVe siecle avant J.-C," Revue dem^taphysique et de morale (1903), pp. 702-17.

38


20/30

DaUaJudovitz

13 Pouchelle elaborates this cohesion between anatomical andsocial categories in Mondeville, see her Corps et Chirurgie, pp. 189-92.

^4 See Aquinas's Summa Theologiae (I, II, 13, 2) and Gomez-Pereira, Antoniana-Margarita, opus nempe physicis medicis acthelogicis non minus utile quam necessarium (Medina del Campo,1555-58). In his letter to Mersenne, June 23, 1641, Descartes deniesknowledge of Gomez's work and dismisses it off-hand, but thesimilarity of their positions is striking; see G.A. Lindebom's discussionin Descartes and Medicine {Amstetdam: Rodopi, 1979), pp. 61-62.

15 For an analysis of the meaning of this term as presented in lateseventeenth-century dictionaries, see Claude Reichler, "Machine etMachinations: La Ruse des Signes," Revue des Sciences Humaines, Vol.LVIII, Nos. 186-187 (April-October, 1982), pp. 33-39 and Gerard Simon,"Les Machines au XVIIe siecle: usage, typologie, resonancessymboliques," in the same issue, pp. 10-13.

16 See Georges Canguilhem's comments in Vital Rationalist, pp.206-207; see also his general discussion of the relation of the Cartesianmachine to the notion of the organism, in "Machine and Organism,"Incorporations, eds. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kw^inter, special issueof Zones (1992), pp. 45-69.

17 John Cottingham notes that Descartes is referring here to "fic-tional men," introduced in an earlier and (lost) part of the Treatise onMan, analogously to his use of the "new w^orld" in the World, see ThePhilosophical Writings of Descartes, p. 99. For a detailed analysis of therole of the fictional and the axiomatic in the World, see my Subjectivityand Representation in Descartes: The Origins o/Modernity {Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 87-97.

18 Georges Canguilhem, "Machine and Organism," pp. 53-54.1^ For an analysis of the mathematical emd epistemological

underpinnings of Descartes' philosophy, see my Subjectivity and Repre-sentation in Descartes, pp. 39-85.20 In his letter to Reneri for Pollot, Descartes argues that the

statement "I am breathing, therefore 1 exist," is insufficient as anargument for existence, since the thought of breathing implies existencein the mode of "I am thinking, therefore I exist" (April or May 1638;PWD III, 98).

21 Canguilhem, Vital Rationalist, ^.20)7.22 This can be seen in Descartes' later claim in Principles of

Philosophy that, "it is not less natural for a clock, made of the requisite

39


21/30


number of wheels, to indicate the hours, than for a tree which hassprung from this or that seed, to produce a particular fruit" (HR I, 300).

23 Carolyn Merchant, The Death ofNature: Women, Ecology andthe Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), pp. 194-205.

24 Descartes' description of gardens echoes Montaigne's ownastonishment before the hydraulic marvels of his own time, see hisJournal de voyage en Italie par la Suisse et TAllemagne en 2550-1581(Paris: Club Fran^ais du Livre, 1954), p. 109. For a general analysis ofFrench seventeenth-century gardens and their relations to metaphysics,see Allen S. Weiss, Mirrors of Infinity: The French Formal Garden and17th Century Metaphysics (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1995).

25 In the medieval and renaissance traditions, the animal spiritsare invoked to mediate the relation of body and soul, see David P.Walker's discussion in "Medical Spirits in Philosophy and Theologyfrom Ficino to Newton," in Arts du spectacle et histoire des id^es(Tours, 1984), pp. 287-300.

26 For an analysis of dissection as a spectacle of display thatrenders visible the scientific gaze and the perspective of naturalphilosophy, see Francis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body: Essays onSubjection (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 65-76.

27 Jean-Claude Beaune, L'Automate et ses mobiles (Paris: Flam-marion, 1980), p. 173.28 For an analysis of the clock as the prototype for automatic

machines, see Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York:Harcourt Brace & Co., 1963), pp. 14-18.

29 According to Gary Hatfield, the vegetative soul controlsgrowth, nutrition, and reproductive generation, while the sensitive soulgoverns sense perception, appetites, and animal motion. Descartesgrants the vegetative and sensitive souls to animals alone, see Hatfield's"Descartes' Physiology and its Relation to his Psychology," The Cam-bridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 344.

30 Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1995), p. 278.

31 Rene Descartes, Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed. Ferdinand Alquie(Paris: Gamier, 1973), Vol. I, p. 480.

40


22/30

DaliaJudovitz

52 See Leonora Cohen Rosenfeld's discussion of these neo-platonic and mystical traditions in the works of Henry CorneliusAgrippa, and Marcilio Ficino in From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine:Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to La Mettrie (New York:Octagon Books, 1968), pp. xxiii-xxiv.

53 In his letter to More, 5 February 1649, Descartes notes thatanimals do not possess thought, nor the ability to use speech (PWD, III,366). In his letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, 23 November, 1646, heexplains that he differs with the opinion of Montaigne, who attributesthought to animals (PWD, III, 302).

54 See Descartes' letter to Plempius for Fromondus, 3 October1637; PWD III, 62). For an analysis of La Mettrie's and d'Holbach'smaterialism, see Frederick Albert Lange's The History of Materialism,trans. Ernest Chester Thomas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1925),pp. 49-91 and 111-123.

55 Seris refers to Descartes' letter to Henri More, 5 February 1649,wherein he states that "speech is the only certain sign of a thoughthidden in a body" (PWD III, 366); see his Langages et machines a I'ageclassique (Paris: Hachette, 1995), p. 24; my translation. Whereas HiramCaton argues that Descartes should have posited thought, rather thanspeech as the true distinction between men and animals, see his TheOrigin of Subjectivity: An Essay on Descartes (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1973), p. 99.

56 See Descartes' comments in Meditation Six and his Reply tothe Sixth Objection. Also see his correspondance with Princess Elisabethof Sweden, especially letters of 21 May and 28 June 1643; by 1645 thequestion of the union of the mind and the body becomes an inquiry intothe passions. This discussion of the interaction of the mind and the bodyattains its fullest elaboration in The Passions of the Soul (completed1645/6 and published in 1649).

57 My reading differs with Keith Gunderson's efforts to distin-guish these two tests as 1) the language test and 2) the action test, seehis Mentality and Machines (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1985), 2nd. ed., pp. 8-17.

58 However, this virtualization of the body will lead to the agres-sive solidification of the body as the object of practical discourses, suchas medicine and mechanics, that will attend to its administration, seeFrancis Barker, The Tremulous Private Body, pp. 93-94.

41


23/30

WKITa

PAROLES GELEESUCLA French StudiesVolume 16.1 1998


24/30


25/30

PAROLES GELEESUCLA French Studies

Ce serait le moment de philosopher et derechercher si, par hasard, se trouvait idhndroit ou de telles paroles degelent.

Rabelais, Le Quart Livre

Volume 16.1 1998


26/30

Editor-in-chief:Assistant Editor:Editorial Board:

Consultants:

Page Layout:Cover Art:

Heather HowardFrance LemoineHelen ChuVanessa HeroldSangheeta MehtaBendi BensonSheila EspineliHoUy GilbertVera KlekovkinaDaniel JohnsonSoheila KianYvorme IvoryHoUy Gilbert

Stacey MeekerMichael StaffordLena UdallMadelaine La CoteraJuhe MasiChelsea RayMichelle Tanenbav^mAllison RiceSylvie Young

Paroles GeMes was established in 1983 by its founding editor, KathrynBailey. The journal is managed and edited by the French GraduateStudents' Association and published annually under the auspices of theDepartment of French at UCLA. Funds for this project are generouslyprovided by the UCLA Graduate Students' Association (GSA).Information regarding the submission of articles and subscriptions isavailable from the journal office:

Paroles GeliesDepartment of French212 Royce HallUCLA, Box 951550Los Angeles, CA 90095-1550(310) [email protected]

Subscription prices: $10 for individuals$12 for instituHons$14 for international subscriptions

Back issues available for $7 domestic, $12 international each. For alisting, see our home page at:http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/parolesgelees/Copyright 1998 by the Regents of the University of California.ISSN 1094-7294


27/30

CONTENTSInterview with Terence Cave 5

Helen Chu and Steve Stellawith an Introduction byJean-Claude Canon

Virtual Bodies: Anatomy, Technology, and the Iiihuman inDescartes 21

Dalia JudovitzBodies of Enlightenment in Diderot's Encyclopedie 42

Dianah LeighJackson"XX+XX=XX": Monique Wittig's Reproduction of theMonstrous Lesbian 73

Julie ScanlonThe Ghetto Novels of Guillaume Dustan 97

DanielHendrickson andMarc Siegel


28/30


29/30


30/30

escholarship uc item 5ww094n7

Documents